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Both sides, however, agree that the abortion issue is a symptom of a larger problem of sexual violence in the military.

The Defense Department has acknowledged 3,191 reported sexual assaults within the military in 2011. And taking into account the likelihood of unreported assaults, the actual statistic could approach 19,000 annually, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in January.

Women make up a larger portion of the U.S. military than ever before. The 1.4 million-member active-duty force includes about 205,000 women, nearly 15 percent of the force, the Pentagon reported in February.

Sexual violence in the military is “a stain on the good honor of the great majority of our troops and their families,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, according to a report by the American Forces Press Service.

“Unfortunately, I know that when we take women into violent places, they experience violent things,” said retired Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, who was commander of the Army Medical Command, chief of the Army Nurse Corps and acting surgeon general of the Army in 2007.

“The reality is that sexual assault happens around the world,” Pollock said, and women in the military can be victimized by the enemy, contractors and even colleagues.

Advocates for Shaheen’s amendment also said better prevention of these crimes is necessary, but she sees that as a separate issue.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, who’s spoken out against sexual violence in the military, appeared in the documentary “The Invisible War,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has been making waves in the military community.

“We have a history of these things going on,” Laich said, pointing to sex crime allegations against three Air Force Academy cadets in January, the 1991 Talhook scandal, as well as this year’s high-profile sexual assault investigations of drill instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

“The Shaheen amendment will be a step in the right direction, but the fact of the matter is that sexual violence in the military is a cultural issue,” Laich said. “The Old Boys network in the military needs to be put in the trash bin.”

Both Pollock and Laich have been vocal advocates for the Shaheen amendment, arguing it’s wrong for servicewomen not to have the same access to abortion care as the federally covered women they’re serving.

“The majority of women are afforded a choice after they’ve been sexually assaulted as to how they want to manage that,” Pollock said.

The issue is about equity, not politics, she said. “I do not think that military women should be political pawns.”

Readers' Comments (8)

What is it with you Democrat women? Your lives seem to be concerned about only one thing, abortion. Is sex always on your mind when you wake up each day? Ever since the common sense and respect train ran off the rails in the sixties it’s been sex sex sex abortion abortion abortion contraceptive contraceptive contraceptive with you people on the left. Talk about a one-track mind.

I am sorry if you don't like Senator Shaheen's policy position, but that gives you no right to attack her personally. Senator Shaheen happens to be my Senator and I am proud to have her. She is thoughtful and intelligent, and she does a great job for the State of New Hampshire.

It is a sad day when people of little intelligence, that have nothing to offer in the political discussion of this country other than attacks.

Let me ask you how would you feel if your daughter, was member of the US Military, and was raped by another member, would you really force her to give birth to her rapist child? That to me seems unkind and unfeeling.

Thank you Senator Shaheen for standing up for the rights of my sister and my mother.

If any group has a one track mind focusing on other people's private lives, it is certainly the right wing GOP Christian in name only tea bag brains who spend all their time pushing for trans ******l probes, contraception restrictions and dissing gays....

If a woman is willing to have a pair of scissors inserted to cut her unborn baby to pieces without anesthesia, then she cannot be found to complain about a trans-vag probe.

Think of it as a camera that exposes the truth that there is a living, sentinent, feeling, human baby who wishes to live and not be slaughtered by the cruel bloody-handed knives of the abortionist.

Oh and I DO have a daughter, and she shares my pro-life views. In fact, I think that she is quite grateful that she was not savagely killed in the womb, as have about 65 million defenseless babies since Roe v. Wade.

If a woman is willing to have a pair of scissors inserted to cut her unborn baby to pieces without anesthesia, then she cannot be found to complain about a trans-vag probe.

Think of it as a camera that exposes the truth that there is a living, sentinent, feeling, human baby who wishes to live and not be slaughtered by the cruel bloody-handed knives of the abortionist.

Oh and I DO have a daughter, and she shares my pro-life views. In fact, I think that she is quite grateful that she was not savagely killed in the womb, as have about 65 million defenseless babies since Roe v. Wade.

You see, not all females are brutal abortionists.

First, you can't say whether the baby to be aborted wishes to live or not as the brain has not formed.

Second, if your daughter were brutally gang raped you think she would still want to keep the baby?

As usual, Democrats are being accused of what the Republicans actually do. Where are the jobs? No, it's more important to interfere with women's rights. Create jobs? No, block anything that would do that, complaining the whole time and doing what? Bringing up abortion. Again. And again. In every state and every venue they can drum up.

So this time a Democrat is bringing it up. In response to the "Old Boy" network that loves to claim, "She must have wanted it (asked for it, looked for it, etc.)" after being raped. By men who are too stupid to understand that a man who thinks that way is so completely undesirable that she wouldn't willingly touch him with a 10 ft. pole.

An investigation and rules will contain this violence against women? Not hardly. That's like setting the fox to investigate violence in the hen house.

It cannot be left up to men to decide what is to be done with a woman's body. That whole concept is absurd. Women who are against pregnancy termination don't have to go that way. This is America. Let the majority vote on it instead of legislating it behind closed doors with no women allowed.